They go on all year, all over Italy, but for some reason it’s only in the autumn that I give any thought to the innumerable festivals dedicated to food.  Or food products, or plants or animals, or anything peptic or nutritious.

This sign in the village of Giavera del Montello is announcing the local "Sagra dei Spinei," which are the stoppers of the wine barrels. In case these don't sound especially tasty, the point of the sagra is to drink the newly fermented contents of the barrels, plus the traditional accompanying roasted chestnuts. Why didn't they just say "Sagra del vino"? You'll have to ask them.

The keyword is sagra, which the dictionary defines as “feast,” “festival,” or “religious festival,” because the local product being celebrated is sometimes linked to the local patron saint.  Not required, though.  It’s more the local product that is worshiped and glorified.  Anyway, the public tends to respond more quickly to the phrases “gastronomic stands” and “typical products” than to “religious procession and Mass,” and these events are usually aimed at the paying visitor, not the quaint locals who in days of yore would have been the only participants.

Rummaging through assorted calendars  for something fun and comestible to celebrate this month in the Veneto , I discovered that in October there are sagre devoted to chestnuts, pumpkins, cheese, grapes, jujubes (known in Venetian as zizoe), honey, wine, baccala’, black truffles, ducks, walnuts, apples, eels, and the gnocco (plural gnocchi, since you tend not to eat just one).  This one is tempting, as “gnocco” is also slang for “dullard,” “poltroon,” “dimwit,” which I think is funny, though I assume the organizers are not referring to the people they want to attract.

If they set up stands of fresh-picked chile peppers at the Automotive Dealers' Day, do you think anyone would think it odd?

I see that “Automotive Dealer Day” sneaked its way onto the list for the area around Verona.  Hard to think of what would be good to eat here, though I guess 40W oil might be useful for frying. Maybe this is one event in which food isn’t involved, hard as that may be to imagine.  Unless they are cleverly referring to the automotive dealer as the edible item.

The few sagre I’ve been to tend to follow a simple pattern: Pick a local product you wish to festivize; get lots of it; organize it on stands or in halls, possibly with demonstrations of its cultivation, history, industrial management, recipes, or whatever other features seem important; cook lots of it in various ways to sell at inflated prices; add some extra events, such as demonstrations of historic skills (how to make cheese or spin wool or other things the old-fashioned way is popular); perhaps add some race or competitive event; publicize, provide parking (this one is optional), make money.

Oh — and make sure you hold your event in a picturesque little place that is almost (or better, completely) unreachable by public transport.  Trains?  Buses? Of course they exist, except on Sunday, when often they do not.  Then you get off at the nearest station and try to find a taxi or, as happened last year, you walk.  We did eight miles. Lino has made it clear that we are not going to repeat this exploit.

The pumpkin known as "zucca barucca" is also called the "veal of Chioggia." Gives you some idea of the subsistence level down there. I can imagine mothers telling their children, "Eat it -- it tastes just like veal."

The problem is that any sagra reasonably near home base isn’t very appealing.  You need distance, even a frustrating distance, to create the necessary allure.  Because — let’s be honest — spending the day wandering among pumpkins or grapes doesn’t have a lot more intrinsic appeal than spending the day in the produce department of the supermarket.  Spending the day among gnocchi — why travel?  As soon as you walk out the door here, you’re surrounded by them.  So to speak.

I spent two days trying to organize the logistics to go to Arqua’ Petrarca, which devotes two consecutive Sundays to its local star, the zizoe.  In fact, I had my heart set on it.  This is always a bad move, because disappointment is usually right behind.  I discovered that while a train does go to the nearest town, Monselice, there are two choices for traveling the four miles (six kilometers) to Arqua’ Petrarca.  The first was by taxi — there is one taxi in Monselice — and the driver wanted 20 euros ($27) each way.  You see that it’s not only in Venice where they flay your wallet alive.  Or the bus.  I checked, not without some difficulty, with the bus company, and guess what?  They don’t run on Sunday.

I myself would seriously considering getting a folding bicycle , which would be easy to carry on the train, but Lino didn’t want to hear about it.  He may have sensed I was edging too close to committing an Americanata.

I forgot to mention that for us to arrive at a sagra at a reasonable hour (say, 9:00 AM, when it might be opening), it means getting up at 4:00.  Because to be at the train station by 6:00 or so means there is only one vaporetto running — sorry, I meant crawling.  So if I’m prepared to get up in the middle of the night like some shift worker in a Christmas-ornament factory, the sagroids — or however the organizers are called — ought to make some provision for me.

Sending a limousine would be acceptable.

I think they should have a sagra of the sunset. The best thing is, you don't have to buy anything, not even a ticket on a bus or train that doesn't exist.

Stalking the wild sagra is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The first day of autumn came and went as decreed by the cosmos, but around here summer didn’t get the memo.  The heat wave that began some two months ago is still enjoying itself thoroughly, lolling on the beach, gleaming on the Alpine peaks, bringing  joy to the daring hoteliers who risked staying open and not unconsiderable damage to the farmers.

It was the hottest September on record; on average, nearly 3 degrees above the norm. In Piemonte, Torino registered 30 degrees C (86 degrees F), a September temperature it hasn’t felt since 1753. Rainfall has become a distant memory.

The farmers are not amused.  Not only are the crops lollygagging along for lack of rain and excess of heat, but the harvest, whenever they manage to make it, is going to be puny. Ten percent fewer grapes, and they’re already fermenting — unheard of.  Tomatoes and olives and rice are down 20 percent.

No matter where you go, there will be some business named for Venice. In Conegliano Lino paused in front of the Trattoria "Citta' di Venezia," but I discovered a Cafe Venezia in Casablanca. Anyway, there isn't a Trattoria Citta' di Conegliano in Venice, which I think is narrow-minded.

But one crop is still going strong: The Adriatic beaches continue to pullulate with tourists even though the kiosks are closed and the lifeguards have all gone home.  Some wag had his picture taken under his big umbrella holding a batch of chestnuts, two seasonal icons which have never met and probably never even heard of each other.

But let’s make the proverbial hay while the proverbial sun is still proverbially glowing.  Even though school started two weeks ago, Gianni Stival, vice-mayor of Caorle (a beach town) is dreaming of a bumper crop of late vacationers and has proposed — not for the first time — that the Veneto postpone the first day of school for two whole weeks.

“It would be good for tourism,” he explains, “because now when the first school bell rings at the middle of September, families are compelled to go home.” And take all their money with them.  Never mind if little Bepi never learns the names of the European capitals or the definition of plankton or that when a girl says “no” she’s pretty likely to have meant “no” (oh wait — they don’t teach that). Whatever is good for tourism is, by definition, good for everybody, assuming that little Bepi has somehow learned to count past 20.  Or maybe that doesn’t matter either, now that cash registers calculate the correct change.

Last Saturday we decided to become tourists, in our own small way, so we took the train to Conegliano, a small but prosperous provincial town just 58 km (36 miles) from Venice.  Conegliano is  famous for Prosecco and a painter named Giovanni Battista Cima (1460-1518), nicknamed “da Conegliano,” or “from Conegliano,” so we don’t confuse him with all those other Giovanni Battista Cimas.

I ate cappellacci di zucca, or "big straw hats stuffed with pumpkin," which were bestrewn with smoked ricotta and drenched with butter. This is a typical autumn dish -- note the pumpkin -- of the area around Ferrara, but it tasted fine here too. Three of these will give you the strength to harvest another five acres, if you can manage to stay awake.

It was a heavenly day — sorry for the farmers, but we loved it, even though we were thwarted in our intention to browse the weekly market, which spreads along the main street and its tributaries offering everything from socks to handmade baskets.  Don’t assume that Saturday has been ordained by God, or the mayor, as the perfect day for a big market.  Turns out they hold it on Friday. In case you ever need to know.

Members of a local mycology club were setting up an exhibition of just-collected local mushroms ranging from delectable to fatal. The drought made a serious dent in this harvest, as well; there ought to have been several times more than these.

The backdrop of tiny wild apples and unshelled chestnuts (the green spiky ball) made a very attractive arrangement

The chestnut squad at work: One man roasting them, two others sitting by bags of chestnuts from Cuneo, slitting their shells, one by one, to prevent their exploding in the heat.

A classic autumn assortment (though no pumpkins). Clockwise from bottom left are walnuts, plums, chestnuts, giuggiole (jujubes), persimmons and grapes.

Mirtilli, or wild blueberries, at only 12 euros a kilo ($8 a pound). Pretty cheap, considering these are all picked by hand in the woods.

 

These mushrooms, on the other hand, are absolutely for eating: "Galletti" and "finferli," also uncultivated. Delectable.

 

This is fall? is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

There ought to be a special Venetian handshake, or greeting, or food (what? no special food??) to mark this little anniversary.

But I did hear something that sounded like a mystic knock at the year’s door, loud enough to be heard but perhaps not enough to be noticed.

The knock that struck ever so faintly on the old cochlea was delivered at the Rialto market.  (You see? Of course food belongs in the picture. I was only testing you.)

These are carletti, and their moment is so fleeting you might not even see them the day you go to the market. Lino forages for them along the lagoon shoreline, and if you don't get them at just the right moment, whatever their parent plant may be will develop them into something inedible. They aren't cultivated anywhere; these little bouquets were picked by somebody, leaf by leaf.

Bruscandoli, or wild hops, stay in the market longer than the carletti. Both of these plants make an excellent risotto -- that appears to be their main mission in life.

Instead of an occult greeting, there is an assortment of poetry passed on by the ancients to acknowledge the moment. Once again, it comes from the fathomless store of balladry that Lino memorized as a lad. If his teachers had had any notion that his brain was going to retain all this material far, far into the distant decades — maybe even forever — they might have wondered if it would have been better to have him memorize something else.  Like algorithms, or the names of the then-68 member countries of the UN, or all the books of the Bible.

But poetry seems to have turned out to work better, because how often in any day or occasion would it be necessary, or even appreciated, to burst out with all the books of the Bible? Poetry, however, is always the Right Thing to say.

In exactly the same place (and perhaps bucket) where you can buy calicanthus in December, peach blossoms appear for a brief period in early spring.

So this morning, like every March 21, was marked by a spontaneous recitation of the vernal poesy of Giovanni Pascoli and Angiolo Silvio Novaro.  Read these to the mental music of blackbirds cantillating in the dawn, and the sound of the truck delivering the branches of peach blossoms from Sicily.

If I had time, I would research the reasons for selling peach blossoms, and not apple or apricot or almond or any other flowering tree. I myself would like to know the reasons, but for now I can only say that these are here because that’s what people do.  ”People” meaning the growers, sellers, and buyers.  So don’t come asking for pear or loquat blossoms or any other frippery.

Valentino, by Giovanni Pascoli.  Lino launches into it like greeting an old friend:  ”Oh! Valentino vestito di nuovo/come le brocche dei biancospini!/Solo, ai piedini provato dal rovo/porti la pelle de’ tuoi piedini…”

Biancospino, or common hawthorn, is one of the first heralds of spring.

Then there are lines he doesn’t remember so I’ll skip those, then the conclusion and the link to March: “… e venne/Marzo, e tu magro contadinello/restasti a mezzo…ma nudi i piedi, come un uccello:/come l’uccello venuto dal mare,/che tra il ciliegio salta, e non sa/ch’oltre il beccare, il cantare, l’amare/ci sia qualch’altra felicita’.”

Valentino is a poor country boy whose widowed mother survives by selling the eggs from their chickens. Winter is brutally hard and he has outgrown the shoes she made for him. The poet compares his bare feet to those of a bird.  But then in March come the first signs of spring, and he concludes, “like a bird that came from the sea, that leaps in the cherry tree, and doesn’t know that other than to eat, to sing, to love, there could be any other happiness.”

The second of these classics is a little paean to the soft rain of March, which makes the plants begin to bloom.

Che dice la pioggerellina di marzo? by Angiolo Silvio Novaro:

Che dice la pioggerellina di marzo/che picchia argentina/Sui tegoli vecchi/Del tetto, sui bruscoli secchi/Dell’orto, sul fico e sul moro/Ornati di gemmule d’oro?”

“What says the misty rain of March/that strikes silvery/On the old tiles/Of the roof, on the dry motes/Of the garden, on the fig and on the mulberry/Adorned with buds of gold?”

He goes on to say that winter is past, tomorrow spring will come out, trimmed with buds and frills,with bright sun, fresh violets, the beating of birds’ wings, nests, cries, swallows, and the stars of almond, white… The entire team, in other words, plus cheerleaders.

All this sounds much better in Italian, but in any language these poems and their ilk amount to a deep sigh of relief.  Sometimes it’s not so much that spring is here, but that winter is gone.  Less winter, more spring. If that doesn’t call for a poem, you may have a soul made of styrofoam.

No offense.

"Quando la rosa mete spin/xe bon el go' e el passarin." When the rose begins to bud, the go' and the passarini are good. In other words, to everything there is a season, and March is the moment for these creatures.

The passarini are looking good.

First Day of Spring in Venice is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Even if you were to speak Venetian, you may have occasionally overheard an expression being used that expressed almost nothing to you:

“No ti xe gnanca sangue da papalina.” (No tee zeh NYANG-ka sang-way da papa-EE-na.)

It literally means “You (or he, or they) don’t have even as much blood as a papalina.”  It figuratively means, “There’s essentially no connection between us” — referring to relatives who are along the line of being a second cousin twice removed of the aunt of your stepsister.  The underlying concept is that a papalina is so small that it contains perhaps two drops of blood, if that much.

So what, I hear you cry, is a papalina?

It’s a fish.  It’s a member of the sardine family, and in English it’s called a sprat. If you like sardines (fresh, I mean, not canned), you will almost certainly love its modest but abundant little relative, if you can find it.

Because now that so many people have switched from the finny food of their childhoods to the fancy fins of today, it’s not easy to find papaline (the plural) in the fish market.  They might occasionally be lying there on some intrepid vendor’s long icy counter, between their more glamorous cousins, the bigger sardines and the smaller sardoni, or anchovies.  And besides being good, and good for you, they’re delightfully inexpensive.  Mainly because hardly anybody wants them.

I’m writing this today because Lino’s quest was rewarded yesterday and he came home with a pound of the little critters. Lunch that day was an unprogrammed gorgefest.

These are papaline. Each is about three inches long and provides two enthusiastic mouthfuls. In our case, very enthusiastic.

There is only one truly correct way to eat them, and that is grilled.  (You can do whatever you want, obviously — I’m just telling you.) And not merely grilled — you must eat them when they come right off the grill.  Or, as the Venetians say, “a scotadeo” (ah scotta-DAY-oh).  Literally “burning your fingers.”

Funny, they don’t say “scorching your tongue” or “searing your lips.” Venetians obviously reject the Japanese concept that if it’s too hot to hold (they’re referring to a cup of tea), it’s too hot to eat.

Unfortunately, the only place you’re ever likely to have the chance to incinerate your fingerprints will be at somebody’s house, or a picnic/party of some kind.  You might find a few thrown anonymously into a mixed fishfry or even platter of mixed grilled fish at a restaurant.  But it’s Not the Same.

There’s another comment which invokes this member of the Clupeidae family. It’s something only Lino says, and it comes from his heart: “You grew up eating papaline.”

He will utter this in an accusing way to the air as we pass the guilty individual. Sometimes he goes on, “You’ve forgotten when your nose ran all the time and you wiped it on your sleeve because you didn’t have a handkerchief.” Lino still sees some of this category of person around the neighborhood. “We were kids together,” Lino will tell me. “Now they’re eating LOBSTER and SOLE. But what can you say? They grew up eating papaline.”

He says this with a delicate blend of disdain and regret, because whoever he may be referring to has progressed far — too far — beyond his or her hardscrabble childhood, a life in which cheap fish and several tons of polenta were about all there was to keep you going till tomorrow.

Forgetting when you ate papaline means you’ve abandoned your roots, gotten above yourself, become mutton dressed as lamb. Rejecting papaline is the tertiary stage of voluntarily transforming yourself into something that may be real, but it’s phony.  Kind of like Formica that looks like wood. It doesn’t have anything to do with how you dress, because there are plenty of people even in this neighborhood who have banished as many tokens of their past as they can.  Their wives even have coats of some kind of fur. So it’s not about appearances, essentially, but attitude.

You get a pass because you never ate them in the first place, so you’re okay  But if you should ever have the chance, I advise you to take it.  Because in their own little way, the papaline are another Disappearing Venetian, like the itinerant knife-and-scissors grinder.

But tasting better.

Venetian papa who? is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Days — and I suppose nights — can become as routine (fancy way of saying “monotonous”) here in the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world as they can in Tick Bite, North Carolina, or wherever the daily round has worn a groove into your Day Planner, however gorgeous the surroundings may be.

I love January here for many reasons, and one of the big ones is that nobody else seems to.  Which is to say that almost all the tourists are dormant somewhere, with the kids in school and the budget busted by Christmas and Crisis, and dark coming on early and so on.

Exhibit A:  The #1 vaporetto on the Grand Canal last Friday morning. In a month or so, Carnival will be here, and if you can find a way to force yourself into the crush on every vehicle in the city then I admire your spinal cord, or your love of your fellow man, or your skill with a flooring chisel or Irish shovel, or whatever.  I would gladly supply a photograph of this inescapable fact of life here, but I never use the vaporettos during Carnival, except maybe at dawn.

And not long after that, the Tourist Season will be declared open, and the vaporettos will become troop transports loaded with brigades of touristic infantry loaded with all their battle gear — suitcases, duffel bags, backpacks, strollers, children and dogs. If there were a way for them to bring their pet guppy to Venice, people would do that too.

So this scene, which may look to you like just a lot of plastic seats, is a Thing of Beauty because those seats are empty.  This vision is so rare and wonderful that it’s almost worth getting on the #1 to go nowhere for no reason just so you can savor it, like a 1997 Brunello di Montalcino, but for a lot less money.

This is what the #1 looks like at 11:00 AM in January, coming up to the Rialto stop, one of the busiest points in the city. There will always be shopping carts, but seeing only two is remarkable. And not seeing strollers loaded like hopper cars hauling iron ore, and ponderous rolling suitcases, and monstrous backpacks, is simply amazing. Plus the fact that everyone in this vaporetto, as far as I can make out, is Venetian.

This time of year doesn’t call to mind mere metaphors involving food and drink.  The real thing is at hand.

Last Saturday I was in a big supermarket on the Lido and came upon this heavenly vision of something wonderful about Carnival, the quintessential Carnival pastry. You can get the same items in pastry shops, naturally, for more money, naturally, but the important thing is, they’re here.  The galani have returned, like the migrating monarch butterflies landing in Milwaukee.

Crostoli. It's not a trick of the lighting that makes them look so good. They are so good.

As you see, there is freedom of expression in naming this delicacy, whether baked or fried.  ”Galani,” “crostoli,” (CROSS-toh-lee) and “chiacchiere” (KYAK-er-eh) all translate as “irresistible and addictive slices of fat and sugar.” Historically, you are allowed to begin eating these any time after Epiphany, right up to Ash Wednesday.  Some culturally degraded but economically advanced vendors continue to sell them during Lent, but they must be related to the C.D. but E.A. vendors who sell Carnival masks and hats all year long. There is something odd about seeing teenagers wearing big plush multi-colored harlequin hats in August, but hey.  It’s no odder than seeing people selling them. Venice must be the city where selling was invented.

As for the galani, I resist buying them.  But it’s entirely possible that I will give in at some point and spend an afternoon making a batch of these crunchy morsels.  I did it last year for the first time and boy, was that a mistake. We ate them all in two days.  True, I could make just half a batch, but that seems unpleasantly intelligent.  Why eat only three pieces of something that’s bad for you?

This version is being sold as "leaves of KAMUT," a relative newcomer to the grain bin which is the commercial name of khorasan wheat. This ancient variety is supposedly richer-tasting and infinitely better for you than more usual wheat. I don't know quite what the point would be in using a healthy ingredient in an item like this, but I'm certainly willing to try it.

Don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

More crostoli.

And more.

Let's throw powdered sugar on them. That ought to obliterate any remaining traces of nutrition.

Can't decide? Buy them all.

Or wait for me to make some, she said modestly.

Venice in January is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Of course you already know that “La Madonna della Salute” does not mean “Our Lady of the Salute.” She is Our Lady of Health, and every year on November 21 everyone in Venice who can walk, and even some who can’t, make the pilgrimage to her church to offer a candle and say however many prayers are filling their hearts.

Just as at the feast of the Redentore, a votive bridge is installed -- here spanning the Grand Canal. It is intended to carry the faithful piously over the water, but it's also an excellent vantage point for snapshots.

Yesterday was not a propitious day, meteorologically speaking.  For two or three days the  Gazzettino had been feverishly predicting acqua alta of 120 cm [four feet] that morning.  (It didn’t happen.) There was plenty of water, however, in the form of a frigid rain.  It wasn’t heavy, but it was determined, the kind of rain that isn’t thinking about anything else.  And it got dark early.

Perhaps they look innocent enough to you. That's because you can't smell them.

There had also been an anxious sub-theme, which began circulating several days early, on the impending castradina famine.  Castradina the basis of  the traditional dish for this festival, a soup made of cabbage and a haunch of mutton which has been dried, smoked, aged, slathered in dark malodorous spices, and possibly even beaten with sticks and dead-blow hammers. It’s an impressive little piece of meat.

But this year, the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, fell in the same period.  Which meant that the general supply of castradina — which has never been huge, seeing as the tradition had fallen into general disuse — had suddenly shrunk to almost nothing.  I have now learned that Muslims favor this foodstuff for their religious observance, and that they offered a better price to the few remaining wholesalers who carry it.

This is amusing, in a way (it takes so little to amuse me), because for years many people didn’t care about castradina.  We’ve had Venetians over to dinner who had never eaten it. We’d see these hunks of black flesh hanging in the butcher shops and would wonder what they did with the ones they didn’t sell.

But in the past year or two, castradina has come back into fashion.  So Venice, according to the Gazzettino, was pullulating with desperate people seeking castradina by any means, in any place, at any price.  I can’t think of a credible substitute.  You couldn’t fake it even with tofu.

Getting ready for the big day doesn't mean just cooking castradina. It means getting the area ready for every contingency.

Back to the weather.  It was cold, dark, and wet.  Just what I think of as perfect weather for this feast, though the women in the mink coats were thwarted by the rain.  As you know, they come out in force on this day even in the driving sun.  The need to show off their fur is just too strong. If you’re wearing beaver or seal, fine.  But minks do not like rain any more than their humans do. I kind of missed seeing these self-contented matrons in their luscious garb.  They do love it so.  Lino calls this the feast of Our Lady of the Fur Coats.

And the delivery of several hundredweight of neatly boxed candles.

There are at least five stands and they all sell exactly the same thing. I don't get it.

This year, to my surprise, we got into the church without having to battle a rugby scrum, and we walked right up to the candle-lighting station and handed over our candles. This was an odd but very pleasant sensation.  Last year there was such a crush of people that I honestly thought we’d be trapped there holding our candles till Christmas Eve.

Then, as usual, we joined the file of people who elected to walk past the high altar and venerate the little Madonna on the other side, crossing themselves and tossing some cash, and walking out through the sacristy.  We found two seats in the heavy wooden choir stalls and sat down to watch people go by. Even though there weren’t massive crowds, the flow was steady.  So far, so normal.

You can’t force pious thoughts.  If you try, they just slide off your brain.  So I sat there not thinking at all, somewhat lulled by the rosary recitation floating over from the other side. And then a thought came to me — more a realization than a thought. I realized that we were being faithful.

All those thousands of frantic, distraught Venetians had been watching people die of the plague all around them till all they had left to offer in exchange for their lives was to promise the Virgin that if she would intercede and save what was left of the city, they would build her a church and come to offer her candles and gratitude every November 21 forever. And after 380 years, people (us) who are so far away from the original promisers that their vow could be thought of as symbolic, or even meaningless, are still maintaining that vow.

Crumpled-up little old people, children of every shape and temper, families of various nationalities, teenage boys, an assortment of tourists — anybody who was there formed another link in the chain tying us to those helpless, despairing people who made a promise that they believed we would keep.

And we did.  And we will.

Venice salutes its Madonna is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

As I may have said before, one of the many things I love about being here is the way life crosses the stream of the year by stepping on a series of metaphorical stones, which are the assorted holidays and feast days of some saints I hardly knew (that means “never knew”) existed.  Now I know more about them than could ever be regarded as useful or even, dare I say it, interesting.

I used to think it was so exotic the way that people in the Middle Ages, according to assorted novels, would always be talking about events according to their nearest feast day: “We’ll plant the corn after St. Swithin’s Day,” “The marriage took place before Candlemas,” and so on.  Now I’m doing it too.

For example, everybody knows that you don’t broach the new wine until St. Martin’s Day, which is today, November 11. The seppie begin to head out to sea after the Feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July). I could go on, but St. Martin is getting restless.

The essential costume must include headgear, usually a crown. This item deftly connects the essential elements, which are San Martino, a sword, and a horse.

The festivities almost always take place on the eve of the official date of whatever the event may be. Therefore, yesterday via Garibaldi was strewn with small children in their “San Martin” garb — clever crowns, sometimes capes, often a bag for the candy they strongly urge people to give them — and carrying whatever bits of kitchenware such as pots and pans (or their covers) to bang and clang as they sing the vaguely threatening San Martino song.  The gist of this ditty is that if you don’t give them candy, they will invoke a variety of unpleasant reprisals. Pimples on your butt is one of the favorites.

The essential elements for the traditional cookie are pastry dough and candies stuck on with icing. This is the minimalist version, reduced, simplified, symbolic. And small.

I like to think about all these people who stroll across the Venetian calendar. The Befana (Jan. 6), Santa Lucia (Dec. 13), the Madonna della Salute (Nov. 21), San Marco (April 25) and now San Martino (Nov. 11). Of course there are many more, when you add in every parish’s patron saint. Just imagine them all  getting together at their annual convention: “International Marching and Chowder Society of Saints of the Venetian Year, this year meeting in Mobile, Alabama.  Before registering, make sure you’ve paid your dues.” It’s just an expression. Saints, by definition, have long since paid them.

Where was I?  Via Garibaldi.  So yesterday afternoon hot chocolate and the crucial cookie called a “Samartin” (Sa-mar-TEEN) were distributed to the children by the good men of the Mutual Aid Society of the Caulkers and Carpenters. When they ran out of children they gave cookies to everyone else, mainly grandmothers and aged aunts who had been circling like buzzards.

Today, the late morning  was clanked and clattered by groups of schoolchildren,  manic little locusts  in impromptu costumes swarming the shops and vendors.  They were banging on their cookware and singing the San Martino song, or at least some of it.

The onslaught begins as the older children head for the next shop --which in this case will be a fruit and vegetable vendor.

They  had also prepared a series of posters depicting San Martino at his greatest moment, the encounter with the freezing beggar by the road and the division of his cloak with his sword.

A little tourist girl meets San Martino -- or more precisely, the beggar at his feet.

I believe he did a few other things in his life which had deeper and longer-lasting importance, but they don’t make anywhere near as good a story.  Or poster.

Considering the ludicrous prices of the cookies on sale around town — a rough estimate tells me that regardless of size they cost 250% more than last year, when the prices were already too high — I think San Martino ought to cut the cookies in half.

Funny how in these pictures it's never winter. That sort of mitigates the whole freezing-to-death part of the story. But this is obviously prettier.

Saint Martin strikes (Venice) again is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

It all seems (in fact, it all is) very long ago now, but last May 23 was the 36th edition of the annual rowing marathon called the Vogalonga.

The 2009  edition was fairly appalling, and if I were to feel like writing a full account I’d need a strip of paper five Babylonian cubits long, or whatever the electronic equivalent might be.

This year everything was perfect, so I didn’t have anything to write about. You know how they say bad news is more interesting than good news?  (I guess somebody says that.) Same thing here.  How many different ways can you say “It was great”?

But great or ghastly as the “Long Row” may be, each year the organizing committee gives each rower a numbered stub when he or she registers, then a few months later puts on a raffle and holds a drawing for the prizes.

As the drawing commences, it looks as if the boats themselves are waiting, like puppies in the pound, to find out who their new masters will be.

I dimly recall this event as occurring closer to the date of the Vogalonga itself, but for the past several years this convocation has been scheduled for late fall, when one’s memories of the equatorial heat and humidity, or whatever other weather dominated your spring morning in the lagoon, have been replaced by the sepulchral chill of an autumn twilight.

Thus we gathered last Friday night, in the waterside pavilion of the fish market at the Rialto, as usual,  for the official thanking-of-many-brave-and-tireless collaborators, and for the drawing.

Venetian oars, like the forcolas, vary according to size and type of boat. These slender constructions suit the mascareta but would be too light and short for a gondola.

The prizes are pretty simple: Nine pairs of forcolas and nine pairs of oars, either pair suitable for rowing a Venetian mascareta.  And two gleaming, brand-new mascaretas in the flesh.

One was financed by the Casino, a bittersweet reminder of the days not so long ago when the Casino had money to lavish on sponsorships all over the city, before their guy in the green eyeshade hit “total” and discovered they were 45 million euros ($52,356,493) in the red. And the other vessel was offered by the Assessorato al Turismo, or Tourism Department, similarly reduced, or so the reports have it, to eating shoe leather and tree bark to stay alive.  I remember when there were three boats to be raffled off, but times are hard even in mascaretaland.

Here is how the event feels:  I smile at an assortment of boating friends, (good); I feel the cold and damp seeping from the wet granite paving stones up through my shoes as the darkening air forms moisture everywhere around me (less good, but tolerable).  And I metaphorically clamp an inverted facelock around the head of that inevitable craving that always lunges at  me from when I see a boat that might, perhaps, in my dreams, be mine — that Christmas-morning suspense, but without any of the pleasure of knowing you’ll actually get to open the presents (not good at all.)

These forcolas may look merely like blunt instruments but they are works of exceptional engineering, traditionally made of a single piece of walnut.

So we walked around the boats, like everybody else was doing.  We stood and listened to the various pronouncements made by Lalo Rosa Salva, chief organizer and tutelary deity of the Vogalonga.  We watched the winners walking away with their prizes.  I stifled my urge to wail.

And then there was the buffet.  No event can ever be said to have occurred in life here if food is not in some way attached to it.  Attached at the end of said event, naturally, otherwise people would just skip it and head directly to the noshfest, however modest it might be.

Because the Rosa Salva family runs one of the city’s oldest and best-known pastry-making and catering operations, there were sandwiches and cookies and wine and sodas and water galore.

The refreshments may not look like much to fight over, but you'd be surprised how strongly some people feel about getting as much as they want.

I remember when the buffet was somewhat more sumptuous — not that I’m complaining.  But let the record show that I remember a generous assortment of sandwiches, and tiny finger-pizzas, and pastries as well as cookies, and also fruit.   Those were buffets that had a certain allure, as attested by the variety of matrons who, in their instinctive, ruthless way, would appear from nowhere and always get to the table first, claiming their spot with more conviction than Columbus claiming North America, and not budging.

They’d stand there eating, elbows half-cocked to ward off any possible intruders, and I have even seen these dowagers stuff extra snacks into their conveniently large handbags. Or even shopping bags, brought for the occasion.  Yes, I have seen that with these very eyes.  The buffet has always, at least up to the other night, provided more drama than the drawing, because some ignorant or foolhardy person would occasionally try to displace one of these dreadnoughts. This year, though, the dowagers didn’t even show up. A sign more vivid than the shrinking prizes that times have indeed become hard.  Pretty soon we’ll have to start stockpiling canned goods.

Oh, about the boats: I didn’t win one.  But as I watched members of the two lucky clubs carry the mascaretas bodily to the Grand Canal, some perplexing thoughts seeped into my mind.

Such as: If Venetian rowers (by which I mean people, of whatever provenance, who row in the Venetian way) form the smallest possible percentage of participants, which they do (something like a quarter of the total) why are the prizes only suitable for Venetian rowing?  Me, I think it’s just fine, and a brilliant way to stand firm for whatever can still be maintained of Venetian-ness.  I merely note that for someone from Lithuania who rows a kayak, a forcola and an 11-foot [3.30 meters] wooden oar might not be exactly what they’d consider a prize. Of course they could sell it, but that would be crass.

Off and into the water, where she belongs.

And this: Why would either of the entities who paid for the two boats feel any particular need or desire to do so?  Of course it’s a very handsome gesture, but if the main purpose is self-publicity — and I may have misinterpreted the reasoning — there must be items with more advertising throw-weight than two little boats which will only ever be seen here where everybody already knows about the Casino and the Tourism Department.

And this: I know raffles are intended to be, or to appear to be, composed of free gifts (i.e., gifts paid for by somebody other than the participants). But considering that each person pays a registration fee, technically you could say that the winner of oars or forcolas had already paid for them. But there I go, being crass.

Anyway, I didn’t win anything, so I don’t care.  Now I think I’ll go buy a lottery ticket.  Maybe my odds will improve and then I’ll be able to buy an entire boatyard all for myself.

This is the racing mascareta, maybe not my first choice for everyday tooling around town. But I would never turn it down.

Raffling the Vogalonga is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

For much of the year, you will almost certainly see people fishing right under the lee of the most beautiful city in the world.  From Sant’ Elena to San Marco, plus other assorted spots along or in the lagoon, they’re out with a couple of poles and a whole batch of free time.  Just now there are more than usual because we are in the period of the  fraima [frah-EE-ma], when most of the fish are heading out to sea.

Depending on the time of year — obviously — these tenacious anglers might be hoping for seppie, or gilthead or sea bass or even grey mullet.  Or whatever The Supreme Fish Deity decides to send swimming past their hooks, old boots and lost gloves excluded.

You can also expect to see people out in their boats, anchored where the tide is going to give them the biggest assist.  Sometimes this perfect fishing spot will be just about in the center of the trajectory of cruise ships or large ferries heading to or from Greece.  The captains blow their klaxons in a huffy sort of way.  The fishermen are all deaf.

The subject of fish and the lagoon is one that I’m going to expand on some other time — probably many times.  Meanwhile, though, I just want to alert you to the fact that there is a dedicated chunk of the male population — they’re always men, though sometimes the guys in the boats bring their wives, if the weather’s nice — who see the lagoon as a place where they might find something delectable to eat, or at least find some of their friends.

By “friends” I mean people they know.  Fishermen have no friends; even if a person they’ve known since childhood, maybe even a relative, asks how’s the fishing, they’ll never say it’s good. They get all vague and crafty. Or if he’s obviously lugging home a miraculous catch, he’ll never say where he was.  This is true everywhere on earth, and no less so here.

Two of my best moments so far involving fishing (as opposed to fish itself) relate to how Lino sees it. Briefly put, he doesn’t believe that anyone born after about 1960 — my ballpark date — knows anything about the lagoon or its inhabitants.  I’m thinking he’s probably right.

I'm staying where the tide is best for me, and the big ships can just work around me. Or stay home. Or sink.

An example: We passed a young man one late summer night on the Lido — it was dark, but not terribly late — standing with his pole on the vaporetto dock, staring into the water, waiting.  ”He’s never going to catch anything,” Lino stated without even pausing.  Why is that?  ”Because he’s trying to catch seppie, and that’s the wrong kind of gear.  Also, the tide is going out.  And they’re not in season right now.”

Second example: We have secretly adopted a man who spends a noticeable portion of his day at the vaporetto dock by the Giardini.  The first time I noticed him, I was getting off the boat, and Lino was standing there a few discreet steps behind him, watching.  They were both, in their own ways, engrossed.

“What’s he catching?” I asked in a whisper.

“Nothing,” Lino replied as we walked away.  ”He’s giving donations (opera di beneficienza, or charity).”  Excuse me?

“He’s been there for hours, rolling little balls of a grated cheese/breadcrumb mash, putting them on his hook and then  waiting for his pole to twitch. After a little while he pulls it up, and the hook is empty.  Even in an aquarium, fish don’t get fed this much.”

So what’s going wrong?  Well, first of all, the guy is attaching the bait in such a way that it comes loose a few seconds after it goes under. The foodball just floats away, probably into the mouth of a big smiling fish. The man is up there imagining his hook as an enormous fatal concealed weapon, and the fish are seeing it as a fabulous food delivery system which requires no effort whatsoever on their part.  They’re just down there floating around with their jaws open, saying “God, I haven’t eaten this much since Vernon’s bar mitzvah.”

The second thing that’s going wrong is that the guy hasn’t figured out any of this.  He just keeps doing it.  Lino can’t believe anybody over the age of two could be so persistent — so hopeful, so convinced — at something so futile.  But the evidence is before us.

I look at it this way: The man is happy.  The wife is happy because he’s out there and not sitting around the house or the bar.  And of course the fish are happy. Happy fish, that’s what we want. Happy and bloated.

You can catch a mormora (striped sea bream) in the lagoon, but it's not likely you'd get all these. I just throw this in to give you an idea of the sort of thing the men might be dreaming of as they stare at the water.

Venetian fish-feed is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Today I woke up to October, and while you can’t say we’re in the depths of autumn, I’m struggling to accept that summer is no more.

It’s not that fall is so bad — in fact, it has many excellent qualities — but there is one thing about it which I object to. No, it’s not the darkness creeping ever more deeply into the edges of the day, nor the descending temperatures, nor the having to dress with all those layers of clothing that make me feel like some mongrel foot-soldier preparing for battle — brigandine, puttees, Sherden helmet, gauntlets.

No, what I object to is the annual farewell to ice cream.

I know, it doesn’t actually die, it just sort of goes into hibernation. What dies is its natural habitat, which consists of heat, sun, and fatigue.  Of course I could eat ice cream at Christmas, but much as I love it, I don’t see the point.

Little-known fact: Summer was actually invented by Italian gelato-makers. Until you’ve eaten gelato in the sweltering  depths of an endless July afternoon here in the cradle of the Renaissance, you haven’t tasted it in all its extraordinary glory, its divine combination of flavor, texture, and temperature.  It’s the coldness that takes it over the top, far beyond fudge, and I’m convinced that people who live with air conditioning eventually lose their capacity to completely perceive the exquisiteness of the sensation of that frigidity on the tongue.  You have to have reached some tertiary level of heat prostration to really appreciate it.  Sorry: No suffering, no redemption. No sprinkles.

Cones seem to have been invented by any number of enterprising people since the early 19th century. The division between cone people and cup people is deep and wide.

The great thing about ice cream here is that people regard it as food. More  than food, something your body requires for survival in the summer the same way it requires, say, water.  It’s not entertainment, it’s nutrition. Articles will appear (I love them) in which doctors and studies are cited praising its benefits to the human body.  To hear them talk, you’d think you’d have to eat it even if you hated it.

“Eat gelato,” they say.  ”The summer weather demands it.  Your body requires it.  Have as much as you like, it can’t hurt you, it’s the only thing that can help. It’s crucial for everyone — babies, the bedridden, the new litter of puppies. It’s better for you than Omega-3 fish oil.”  Well, they don’t say that, but if they did, I’d believe it.

Here’s an example: Somebody asked on a web forum how many calories are in a gelato that’s served in a cup.  Note the clever way of putting the question so that it’s impossible to answer.  But an intrepid reader didn’t hesitate: “Last week I heard a report on Tg2 [television station],” he replied, “that said that gelato has very few calories.  I think they said 50 calories per cone.”  No mention of how many scoops the cone contains, or even the dimensions of said cone.  But 50 calories sounds about right to me.

Ice cream is a health food.  You have to come to Italy to discover that fact.

One reason, among many, is its lower fat content compared with American ice cream.  Another is the lavish use of fresh fruit in season.  Either of those beneficial aspects can be annulled by adding whipped cream, of course.  Not to mention that you can also get simple slabs of frozen cream.  But your average gelato will not be the fat bomb that goes for premium prices back in the US and A.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US stipulates that to be called “ice cream,” the product must contain no less than 10 percent butterfat. The average is 12 percent.  Premium ice creams in the US can contain as much as 20 percent butterfat.

Italian gelato, on the other hand, contains 7-8 percent butterfat.  Funny, I don’t miss that other four to 12 percent fat at all.  It only means I can eat more of it.

There are a few gelaterie around Venice which in my opinion are worth re-routing your wanderings to visit.  The one in the middle of via Galuppi on Burano, the one at the foot of the iron bridge on Murano. (They don’t have names, or I’d give them to you.)  The gelateria San Giorgio right here on via Garibaldi.

Who could resist the image of rolling hills of ice cream stretching to the horizon?

I realize that opinions vary.  I also realize that there are cultures in which red-bean flavor is more appealing than chocolate/orange fondente. But anyone knows great gelato when they taste it.

Here’s something you may not have known: March 24 is the European Day of Ice Cream.  Surely this hasn’t been instituted to jolt people into thinking of ice cream.  It must have been to jolt people, such as European Parliament members, into thinking about what new laws and special ordinances they can devise to help ice cream propagate more profusely everywhere.

So who is the patron saint of ice cream makers and/or eaters?  There doesn’t seem to be one, but we could construct him or her out of the following pieces:  Saint Lawrence (patron saint of candy makers), St. Martha (dieticians),  Saint Honorius (bakers and sweets), and St. Brigid (dairy products). Also Saint Dolley Madison.

Thinking, thinking...Maybe it would be easier if there were a doctor behind them whispering how good for you it is.

But great ice cream seems not to depend on geography — in Italy, I mean. Not trying to award medals, but I’ve had great gelato all over the map. There was that little storefront in Torino, and Vivoli in Florence, not to mention San Crispino in Rome.  One of the most dazzling frozen treats I’ve ever eaten was served at lunch at a club in Naples. It was a watermelon sorbetto, deep red and with a rich fruity flavor, studded with small chips of bittersweet dark chocolate masquerading as the seeds. Technically not gelato, but unforgettable.  And cold.

I suppose the very best ever – why try to categorize? It’s ridiculous — was in a small shop run by an old man in a hillside village up behind Trapani, in Sicily.  There were only a few flavors; I tried the “cassata,” but it was only a million times better than normal cassata.  The flavor, the texture, the exceptionally perfect level of cold, it all came together into something I am convinced that they eat in heaven.

Somewhere in Venice is a stone cone with four scoops of stone ice cream made just for him. He's been ready for about 400 years.

I’ve had celestial gelato in the usual flavors (strange, in the homeland of espresso I have yet to find a coffee ice cream that means it).  And I’ve also had some of the unusual flavors: honey, rose, pomegranate, walnut and fig, pumpkin, carrot and celery (surprisingly good — think carrot cake).  Also apple and ginger.  Ice-cream makers, like artists anywhere, are on some kind of continual quest.

A few years ago, an Italian legislator got his name in the paper because of his complaint about the deplorable quality of the ice cream served in the Parliament cafeteria. Does this tell us more about the quality of the ice cream, or of the public servant to whom it was served? Yet complaining about inferior gelato, at least in the summer, doesn’t seem totally crazy. And you can’t expect him to be complaining about funding for public schools in August. Nobody would care.

Where in the USA do they eat the most ice cream?  It isn’t Mesa, Arizona. It’s Alaska. I don’t understand that.  It must be the alimentary equivalent of Stockholm syndrome.  That, or each Alaskan eats 200 gallons of it between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

More minutiae:  In 2007, the USA led the world in ice cream production, yet New Zealand was the country that led the world in ice cream consumption. Italy is merely sixth.  More ice cream is eaten in Sweden and Finland than in Italy. There it is again: The colder the country, the colder the food? Bizarre. Unless they’re eating aquavit-flavored gelato.  That could work.

So where do gelato makers go in the winter?  The jungles of Costa Rica, or perhaps the Okavango Delta of Botswana?  I can see them there, up in the trees, sitting on tiny eggs soon to hatch new gelato makers.  Don’t laugh, there are more here every year.

I’m going to miss it, though.  Prometheus brought fire to humans, but I want to meet the person who brought gelato.

She's either musing on how fleeting are earth's pleasures and how little time we mortals are given to enjoy them, or she's still wondering if she should have gotten the rum raisin instead.

Farewell to the soul of summer is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up